We report on how active Housing NZ Corporation has been in seeking housing consents, and how concentrated this has been in Auckland

After our report on building consent activity for November 2017, which showed a noticeable rise in dwelling consent levels, some readers have wondered whether this is being driven by Housing New Zealand Corporation (HNZC) activity.

Statistics NZ has been kind enough to supply that data and it does indeed show a sharp rise in the number of consents initiated by the central government agency. But in terms of an overall proportion it is not excessively high.

HNZC unit sizes have been getting smaller.

And most of the HNZC consents are for new housing in Auckland.

In November, only 4.5% of all consents were for HNZC projects nationally. For Auckland, HNZC consents represent 9.5% of the region’s total for the month, or 9.0% in the year to November. Those latest levels are up up sharply from 3.9% of all Auckland consents in the year to November 2016.

The upcoming focus on KiwiBuild could be expected to raise the influence of HNZC on dwelling consent data nationwide, and especially in Auckland.

Statistics NZ has supplied us data for all regions so readers who would like numbers for other areas can ask in the comment section below.